The last temptation of Odysseus. The last hope she had of complacency with her father and king came and went when the man who would be her husband fell back into the sea.

1

Peter,

I guess I can’t tell you anything too specific, in case you get caught.

Today, I sat in a cathedral until nightfall because people will leave me alone and it’s quiet so I can think. Cathedrals remind me of my family’s priest, and his little church on my father’s island, where I was confirmed the day that I ran away from that life.

I can’t wrap my head around this world, or the people in it. I float among trains and hostels. I am at sea. That is where I am, and where I was when I was on father’s island. I wondered if I shouldn’t kill myself, because it’s hard out here. It’s so hard. I see why my father didn’t want this for me. I guess I’m glad I’m out here, though. I’ll stay out here until the end of the world.

I dreamed about this last night, and I was thinking about this in the cathedral. On this city block, where I am right now, I live with all these strangers in a hazy window of five or ten minutes where stores open and close and clocks aren’t all synchronized. That’s kind of how the end of the world will be, I think. When the end of the world comes, two eyes will bend shut. Ten fingers will curl closed. One tongue will wilt like a dead flower, and two ears will hear nothing. When someone dies, it’s the end of the world for them. It might as well be.

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